C. George Sandulescu:
A Lexicon of Romanian in Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake has been much studied. The instruments of work on the text are so numerous that it is not at all an easy job to make an inventory of them. Particularly when it is a well-known fact that the book is written in more than forty languages.

But one thing is missing: the study of the Romance languages! With the exception of a list of a few hundred Italian words, just because Joyce’s specialization was, indeed, Italian, and a study of Rabelais French, very strongly based on the very Romanian Lazăr Şăineanu, there is absolutely nothing on the systematic study of the Romance languages in Finnegans Wake.

As to the Romanian significance of Plevna, no Joyce specialist in the world is at all aware that there is a very strong connection with the independence of Romania as a country, and with its very existence today.

This book is expressly meant to fill in the gap regarding Romanian studies in Finnegans Wake. We try to bring to the notice of everybody, including the Romanians themselves, that James Joyce and Constantin Brancusi were very good friends. And used to sit and drink together.

Also, Joyce was in Zurich at the same time not only with Lenin, but also with Tristan Tzara. And all three used to spend their time in the Reading Room of the Main Library in Zurich (if you do not believe this, have a look at the opening of the play entitled Travesties by Tom Stoppard). They were all there, working together, in the autumn of 1917!

This book is meant to ask Romanians to learn their own words that are to be found in Joyce’s book. It also asks the rest of the world to pay a lot more attention to Romanian – as a language, as a culture, and as a civilization.

With a little bit of luck, Romania may even survive the “Euro”…

11. 11. 2011

Lidia Vianu

(Romanian follows below)

Please click on the link below and choose "Save file" to download the book in .pdf format